Swope Park’s ‘Watermelon Hill’ is a relic of the city’s segregated past

• Missouri State Archives
• In 1933, the only Swope Park picnic shelter available to African-Americans was called Watermelon Hill

One of the first things that Joelouis Mattox learned from his Phi Beta Signa fraternity brothers at Lincoln College: “You never eat watermelon in front of a white person.”

This was the 1950s, and Mattox quickly understood the meaning: Don’t set yourself as a stereotype in front of the people who perpetuate that stereotype.

During the same period, in Kansas City, many African-Americans balked at using Shelter No. 5 at Swope Park for the same reason. Over the years, the only shelter available for rental to black families at the segregated public park was No. 5, known throughout the black community as “Watermelon Hill.” Some patrons found the name amusing; others saw it as another example of blatant racism in the city’s biggest park, where the “public” swimming pool and golf course were strictly segregated. (A court order officially desegregated the pool on June 12, 1954).

“Black people created that name for Shelter No. 5,” Mattox tells The Pitch, “because people in our community who did use the shelter did bring watermelons with them when they had picnics in the park. But the name was enough to keep some people from going to the park at all.”

Mattox gives a lecture on the history of Watermelon Hill at 2 p.m. Sunday, July 14, at the Southeast Branch of the Kansas City Public Library.